Entertainment

CBS Offering Free, Live, Online Coverage of Entire NCAA Tournament

We already heard about CBS launching its Facebook Brackets application to promote the NCAA March Madness tournament, and how the app would be part of the television network's larger attempt to further engage users and connect them back to the CBS online sports sites. Today, CBS is announcing a partnership with CSTV and NCAA in order to provide all 63 games of the Division I Men's Basketball Championship on demand and free of charge. Get it here.

This is the first time that all of the tournament's games will be made available live on demand, and will be accessible on both CBSsports.com and NCAA.com. As I mentioned in the coverage of the March Madness, it's important for networks to increase their offerings, especially online, as television loses ground to online media distribution.

That's not to say that CBS isn't still hoping to benefit from the typical mentality that occurs at a sports arena in terms of VIP status to games: who has the best seats in the house? CBSsports is offering VIP status for users, giving them first access and shorter "waiting lines" to get to the games. Everyone else will be in the General Admission area. While VIP tickets are still free, this does indicate CBS's need to find some way to bring some order and control to the live, online broadcasting when it comes to the demands this kind of traffic will place on the video player's distribution.

It doesn't appear that this has any implications towards net neutrality, but once CBS gets going with its live, online coverage of the NCAA tournament and users get first hand experience with the VIP versus General Admission wait times to get into the MMOD Player, we'll see how this actually plays out in terms of its efficiency to do what it's supposed to do.

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